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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26079115">if i see the sunlight hit you, i am sure that we'll both decompose</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/reregulus/pseuds/reregulus'>reregulus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Code Geass</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, no dialogue only vibes, resurrection verse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:47:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,715</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26079115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/reregulus/pseuds/reregulus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>there is the ghost within its confines of a man suzaku feels he knew too well and knows that he did not at all. there is ghost of himself, too, underneath the borrowed clothes.</p>
<p>[some suzaku thoughts about resurrection]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kururugi Suzaku &amp; Lelouch Lamperouge | Lelouch vi Britannia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>if i see the sunlight hit you, i am sure that we'll both decompose</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>aaa hello! a friend and i finished binging cg and i have some thoughts. i debated on posting or not, but i dont really have much to lose. its really just prosey suzaku thoughts focused on the events of the resurrection movie and maybe changing the ending because i think if lulu can get away and live as himself (okay, well, not really, but he at least has cc) then so should suzaku. </p>
<p>its my first fic for this, and probably my last. i imagine this has been done before anyway, but ive not looked through the tag here, so ! sorry if this is similar to something else</p>
<p>sorry that i dont use capitalization its just a stylistic choice at this point. </p>
<p>title is from alpha rats nest from the mountain goats.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>it is fitting, he supposes. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he is to become nothing, after all. </span>
  <em>
    <span>zero.</span>
  </em>
  <span> the absence of everything. he finds it strange, in a distant reminiscence, because lelouch could have never been nothing. but suzaku could. he is. what is he to the world now if not a passing shadow, a mask of days that should be forgotten— are being forgotten with every new peaceful sunrise, each day when war did not grin upon them. oh, all it is is a reminder that he should not live. that his current existence is nothing but a mistake. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>it is lonely even inside the mask. there is the ghost within its confines of a man he feels he knew too well and knows that he did not at all. there is ghost of himself, too, underneath the borrowed clothes. at least then, when all he had wanted was to put an end to all that mask stood for, at least he had been alive. now, days go where the cape might simply be held up by old regrets and the wind. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>and true, maybe then all he had been built up of was rage and regret and helpless ideals that he should have known better than to cling on so tightly. but he had been something. he had been suzaku kururugi, son of the japanese prime minister. he had been the sworn knight of princess euphemia li britannia. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>and now, he is nothing. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>if he clings to old names just as those old hopes, then maybe he deserves it. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>is this it? the soft wash of atonement? paying back of dues? is each breath of his the fulfillment of a life lost? and if that was true, then of which ones? the nights that bleed of his youth, those heavy breaths that catch in his throat— those, he thinks then, are his father’s. but the rest? they are too indiscriminate to count. this one, perhaps, of a child in tokyo. the next, the next— </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>and lelouch’s? what of his? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>but even though he had struck his blade true, it was not suzaku who had killed lelouch vi britannia. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>that changes nothing though. it was still suzaku’s hands that washed lelouch’s blood off his mask. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>if his atonement is true, then all the times he forgets he is breathing are the breaths that lelouch should have taken. the moments where, impossibly, his circumstance escapes him. when nunnally smiles at zero, at </span>
  <em>
    <span>suzaku</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he almost smiles too, behind it, before he thinks that it should have been lelouch she is looking at. her brother, not a dead knight, not a betraying friend. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>suzaku supposes, too, that he must atone for that unlived future. after all, he is the only one who can. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he’ll bear enough hate for the both of them. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>anger subsides into bitter acceptance, and he goes on. he goes on because any time he sinks below the mend, an old voice calling from the depths, beneath the waves and everything left behind, plunges it’s hand onto the deep and pulls him up. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>and he hates it. no matter how many times he chokes on his own bitterness, it is never enough. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>because it is not the worlds bitterness— no, no, the world is blithe and living, but suzaku is the one left behind with blood caking in his throat. with wishes caught there that he is unable to voice. unable to rectify. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>if he was forced to live on, then at least he could have found a reason to. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>but he cannot. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he is not needed here. not wanted. who here wants of suzaku kururugi, knight of zero? a man so soaked in betrayal he will never forget the sight of it. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>nunnally does not need him. not any more. her smiles are for the future now, no longer the only card for a weak girl to play. the black knights do not need him. even if they did, suzaku does not know what he could give. no, they take what true nothing had given them and stood boldly at the future's advent. they lead their own paths now, and suzaku— once their enemy— has no right to speak to them. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>the world? did the world need him? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>did they not surrender their own lives so that the worlds could begin? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>the dead, the dead, they are the only ones. they cling to him like forgotten hopes and he fears of sending them away. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>then suzaku will truly be alone. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>but he isn’t. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>in the moonlight, his old friend looks a ghost. silver dancing within his hair, shining upon his skin, lips parting beneath the light and the whole world within his eyes— suzaku considers for a moment that he might have died instead, and now stands in the wake of divinity. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he gives no consideration to his bandaging, the aching of his bones, the scars whose lashes still echo vaguely in memory, the cold and unfamiliar floor. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>because underneath suzaku’s fingertips, lelouch vi britannia is undoubtedly alive. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>there is warmth, there upon his skin. there is warmth, suzaku remembers, somewhere within his heart. within both of theirs. if he reaches far back enough, he can find the version of himself who is crying tears of joy. who cannot find a greater sight than that of his first friend, his only friend, his other half. if it is memories that make a man, then when looking at lelouch, miraculously breathing, suzaku is the greatest one alive. for the idylls of the king are nothing compared to rooftop meetings and lelouch’s honest laughter. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>but he cannot forget about his coldness, the one that lives and had never died. about every single lie, every single gunshot, every single body lying dead on the ground. they all pile high to a mountain, and the top, lies euphemia, still reaching out a wavering hand stained in blood. he cannot put aside the fact that it should be lelouch’s corpse there. he should be dead, he should be dead, </span>
  <em>
    <span>why isn’t he dead?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he breaks. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>suzaku doesn’t remember what he says exactly. his heart moves faster than his mind and all that bitterness and anger he has been choking on spills over before he can even think. there is an impact on his fist, and another, and another, and even though he doesn’t remember what he says, he knows the words. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>how dare you be alive! was it for nothing, then? was it all just another lie? another scheme? another trick you’ve played on me that i was foolish enough to believe in? why did i suffer? why did i take your place? wear your mask? did we not swear? give up everything we had so that they might live? everything we wanted? but you, you, you, you, lelouch, don’t you always get what you want, in the end? and i am always the one who pays the price, so tell me, tell me. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span> why am i alive? </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>why didn’t you tell me?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he remembers cc— he remembers her emotion, her anguish, and suzaku decides that she is undoubtedly alive as well. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>it is almost wordless. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>all lelouch does is call his name and he knows. oh, the world could die and be reborn, and even that wouldn’t change. if his ribs didn’t ache and their impending attack looming over their minds, then he might have laughed. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>it is easier to remember the battles where lelouch commanded him than those where suzaku had been held together only by his wish to kill the man— to kill </span>
  <em>
    <span>zero.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>(somewhere, hope arises that maybe, </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe</span>
  </em>
  <span> this time, suzaku actually could.) </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>(that only means, though, that he’d be allowing suzaku kururugi and lelouch vi britannia to live)</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he gets into the knightmare without any complaint. at least, he could do this, at least, this could be enough. lloyd gives some complaint of his own, though, and suzaku is certain that he must know that it falls on deaf ears. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>damn his wounds, damn his past, damn that godforsaken mask, he is going to do this. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>if all he has to do is follow lelouch’s commands, then they’ll win. it is impossibly simple, when it comes down to it because there is nothing in the world that they cannot do together. they had brought upon a new dawn to a better world— revolutionized the world, they had saved them all. perhaps, even more impossibly, they might get the chance to save themselves. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>it is terribly easy to fall back into that routine. to listen for that voice from the comms and have that hand guide him and let go whenever the battle so fit. as if lelouch is attuned to the ebb and flow of the match, the pulling back and pushing forward, where a knight should move and where a rook should stay, where he should rely on suzaku and where suzaku should rely on him. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>old blood flows, and the boy he once was comes back to life just as well. when did he forget the first incandescent rush of piloting a knightmare? when it meant something of progress, of the future, of an </span>
  <em>
    <span>eleven</span>
  </em>
  <span> underneath britannia’s rule rising against the odds and proving his worth? when it meant something, ultimately, of freedom. and suzaku will be honest, he has never truly known the meaning of that word, but if he thinks of lancelot soaring forward for the first time, then he thinks it something like that. freedom for a guilty man because </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing</span>
  </em>
  <span> meant atonement. </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing</span>
  </em>
  <span> meant the peace that he dreamed of would soon be able to dream as well. that everyone else could, as well. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>suzaku might have always been a symbol. for japan, for britannia. he might only be a symbol and mask now, but— </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he thinks, just as impossibly, that suzaku kururugi is undoubtedly alive, too. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>maybe he had never died. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>because the boy there is drawn to the simple movement of lelouch’s hand at his collar, even as cornelia stands before him. when did they first use that signal? so many years back that suzaku might have always known it. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>the moment cornelia leaves him, suzaku searches for the highest reaching building— a water tower with a figure leaning over the railing, drowned in the soft silken moonlight and it takes a moment to remind himself that lelouch is not a ghost. not a phantom or a memory. he is alive, that he is breathing, that he has come back from the dead and stands there in front of him when suzaku climbs the ladder. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>all those years, too, they were never forgotten or erased by years of strife. even now, lelouch knows how to read him open faced, and if that could have been resurrected, then what else remains in the living body of lelouch vi britannia? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>but that only means that there are enough arguments to be had, tears to be shed, hands to be held as long as human history spans. if there were any measure for the ghosts and breathing bodies between them both, then it might be the reason for the word infinity. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>they are not blameless in anything. they are not innocent, not those boys chasing each other around his family’s shrine. they are not dead, either, which means they must be alive for some reason. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>not just for cc’s wishes, not just for the world, not just for each other. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>you’re the one who should be zero. </span>
  </em>
  <span>but he had wanted to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>none of us should be.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>for themselves. they should live for themselves. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he doesn’t though, because every breaking crack of self imprisonment and inadequacy and isolation holds such a grip on his heart that to be selfish is to be someone entirely different. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>and then suzaku feels something of fear for the first time in what might be a millennia. he hadn’t realized how long ago it had been, because when lelouch says that his time here might be fleeting, a tiny panic births itself in his heart, in a place suzaku didn’t know had survived the wars. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>not when we are finally together again. not when we can finally talk. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he doesn’t say that either, shoving that terrible selfishness overboard. even as it claws at his heart, for a man who has barely been breathing for the past year, he has just remembered what it is like to live. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>are they simply destined to be this way? constantly falling in and out of each other, never to stay? how many times had lelouch died and suzaku survived? is there no end to it, a lifetime of intertwining cut strings? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>i am glad you’re alive. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>because it means that he is alive too. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>a world without you was more lonesome than i expected. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>in the wake of anger of being left behind and betrayal that subsides, there is something of a want alighting. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>at the end of it all, it was always them. the two of them, fighting and laughing and hating, back and back again to each other. pulled close and pushed apart, like the tide’s ebb and flow. they are the same, in some regard, just opposites disguised as such. a white knight and a black prince, when one exists without the other, there is only desolation and despondency for the one left behind.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>even if they had never needed each other in a cloying way, it was only a simplicity. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>because with the two of them together, there is nothing that they cannot do. has it not been spoken throughout their ages? that impossibility becomes their whim when they work in tandem?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>so let it fall, again, suzaku pleads. let them have this one victory, so that maybe, he can afford to look toward more. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>they are changed. indescribably so. but when suzaku had seen him, accepting others, he might even think it for the better. but if he is the one left behind again, the specter overseeing the world’s joy and never taking part, then he wishes that he had never seen lelouch again. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>hope, it has always been a terrible thing. so kill it before it lives again. before he must return to a lonely mask and a never spoken name. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>kill it, but just let him have this one moment before you do. where he is needed for himself. where he is wanted for himself. where he is seen and where he sees. where they are both alive and could speak of something beyond their just deaths. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>sometimes, suzaku thinks that arthur is the only one who remembers him. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>everyone moves on with their lives, but he is the last remnant of the old world. where the people had needed a guiding light and dark mask. shackled by a ghost, how is he to move forward? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>he had accepted it before, in c’s world, when it had been the only resort they could they rely on. he had willingly received his punishment, he had lived on. but that only worked because they both paid the same price. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>so why him? why is he the one forgotten and left behind? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>arthur nuzzles his leg, and that had been enough, once. when his world was resigned to loneliness, but now? when he has remembered what it was to be alive? to smile? to laugh? to have someone who knows him look at him, truly, behind any mask or pretense? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>when lelouch is alive, somewhere else, free of his punishment. so why does suzaku still bear his? if they were truly able to change everything together, then why not this? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>if he is to live on, then why do so in a world that has no need of him? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>but he pushes that aside, too. he kills the hope, because it is the closest he can get to killing himself. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>one day, the in dead of night, there is a knock on his door. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>behind it, are cc and lelouch, in indescribable outfits, and a knowing look passes from cc to lelouch. it is something of pride, suzaku thinks, though he has never been very good at understanding her. something of </span>
  <em>
    <span>i told you so.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>both of them extend their hands to him, and this time, suzaku takes it and leaves the past behind. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank u for reading!!! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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